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Copyright, 1906, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 
Published, September, 1906 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

MAY 17 I90fi 

CLASS 7(^'x)(c. No. 
' COPY B' 



fj 






D. B. Updike, The Merry mount Press, Boston 



This Address was delivered before the Phi 
Beta Kappa of Columbia University in June, 
1905; and it was repeated at Rutgers College 
on Charter Day in November, 1905 



American CCl^atacter 



IN a volume recording a series of talks 
with Tolstoi, published by a French wri- 
ter in the final months of 1904, we are told 
that the Russian novelist thought the Dukho- 
bors had attained to a perfected life, in that 
they were simple, free from envy, wrath and 
ambition, detesting violence, refraining from 
theft and murder, and seeking ever to do good. 
Then the Parisian interviewer asked which of 
the peoples of the world seemed most remote 
from the perfection to which the Dukhobors 
had elevated themselves; and when Tolstoi re- 
turned that he had given no thought to this 
question, the French correspondent suggested 
that we Americans deserved to be held up to 
scorn as the least worthy of nations. 
The tolerant Tolstoi asked his visitor why he 
thought so ill of us ; and the journalist of Paris 
then put forth the opinion that we Americans 
are "a people terribly practical, avid of plea- 



^tnctican sure, systematically hostile to all idealism. The 
(Z^avactet ambition of the American's heart, the passion 
of his life, is money; and it is rather a delight 
in the conquest and possession of money than 
in the use of it. The Americans ignore the arts ; 
they despise disinterested beauty. And now, 
moreover, they are imperialists. They could 
have remained peaceful without danger to 
their national existence ; but they had to have 
a fleet and an army. They set out after Spain, 
and attacked her; and now they begin to defy 
Europe. Is there not something scandalous in 
this revelation of the conquering appetite in a 
new people with no hereditary predisposition 
toward war?" 
It is to the credit of the French correspond- 
ent that after setting down this fervid arraign- 
ment, he was honest enough to record Tolstoi's 
dissent. But although he dissented, the great 
Russian expressed no surprise at the virulence 
of this diatribe. No doubt it voiced an opinion 
familiarized to him of late by many a news- 
paper of France and of Germany. Fortunately 
for us, the assertion that foreign nations are a 
contemporaneous posterity is not quite true. 
Yet the opinion of foreigners, even when most 
at fault, must have its value for us as a useful 
corrective of conceit. We ought to be proud of 



our country; but we need not be vain about it. Jfmetican 
Indeed, it would be difficult for the most pa- Character 
triotic of us to find any satisfaction in the fig- 
ure of the typical American which apparently 
exists in the mind of most Europeans, and 
which seems to be a composite photograph of 
the backwoodsman of Cooper, the negro of 
Mrs. Stowe, and the Mississippi River-folk 
of Mark Twain, modified perhaps by more 
vivid memories of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. 
Surely this is a strange monster; and we need 
not wonder that foreigners feel towards it as 
Voltaire felt toward the prophet Habakkuk, 
— whom he declared to be ''capable of any- 
thing." 

It has seemed advisable to quote here what 
the Parisian journalist said of us, not because 
he himself is a person of consequence— in- 
deed, he is so obscure that there is no need 
even to mention his name — but because he has 
had the courage to attempt what Burke de- 
clared to be impossible,— to draw an indict- 
ment against a whole nation. It would be easy 
to retort on him in kind, for, unfortunately,— 
and to the grief of all her friends,— France has 
laid herself open to accusations as sweeping 

and as violent. It would be easy to dismiss the 
man himself as one whose outlook on the 

3 



Tltnetican world was so narrow that it seemed to be little 
(Character more than what he could get through a chance 
slit in the wall of his own self-sufficiency. It 
would be easy to answer him in either of these 
fashions, but what is easy is rarely worth while ; 
and it is wiser to weigh what he said and to 
see if we cannot find our profit in it. 
Sifting the essential charges from out the 
mass of his malevolent accusation, we find 
this Frenchman alleging first, that we Ameri- 
cans care chiefly for making money; second, 
that we are hostile to art and to all forms of 
beauty; and thirdly, that we are devoid of 
ideals. These three allegations may well be 
considered one by one, beginning with the as- 
sertion that we are mere money-makers. 

II 

Now, in so far as this Frenchman's belief is but 
an exaggeration of the saying of Napoleon's, 
that the English were a nation of shopkeep- 
ers, we need not wince, for the Emperor of 
the French found to his cost that those same 
English shopkeepers had a stout stomach for 
fighting. Nor need we regret that we can keep 
shop profitably, in these days when the doors 
of the bankers' vaults are the real gates of 
the Temple of Janus, war being impossible 
4 



until they open. There is no reason for alarm JTmcrtcail 
or for apology so long as our shopkeeping C^atactct 
does not cramp our muscle or curb our spirit, 
for, as Bacon declared three centuries ago, 
"walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, 
goodly races of horse, chariots of war, ele- 
phants, ordnance, artillery and the like, all 
this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the 
breed and disposition of the people be stout 
and warlike." 
Even the hostile French traveller did not ac- 
cuse us of any flabbiness of fiber; indeed, he 
declaimed especially against our "conquering 
appetite," which seemed to him scandalous 
" in a new people with no hereditary predis- 
position toward war." But here he fell into a 
common blunder ; the United States may be a 
new nation— although as a fact the stars-and- 
stripes is now older than the tricolor of France, 
the union-jack of Great Britain and the stan- 
dards of those new-comers among the nations, 
Italy and Germany,— the United States may 
be a new nation, but the people here have had 
as many ancestors as the population of any 
other country. The people here, moreover, 
have "a hereditary predisposition toward 
war," or at least toward adventure, since they 
are, every man of them, descended from some 

5 



Titnetican European more venturesome than his fellows, 
(Zfjatactet readier to risk the perils of the Western Ocean 
and bolder to front the unknown dangers of 
an unknown land. The warlike temper, the 
aggressiveness, the imperialistic sentiment,— 
these are in us no new development of unex- 
pected ambition; and they ought not to sur- 
prise any one familiar with the way in which 
our forefathers grasped this Atlantic coast 
first, then thrust themselves across the AUe- 
ghanies, spread abroad to the Mississippi, and 
reached out at last to the Rockies and to the 
Pacific. The lust of adventure may be danger- 
ous, but it is no new thing; it is in our blood, 
and we must reckon with it. 
Perhaps it is because "the breed and disposi- 
tion of the people" is "stout and warlike" that 
our shopkeeping has been successful enough 
to awaken envious admiration among other 
races whose energy may have been relaxed of 
late. After all, the arts of war and the arts of 
peace are not so unlike; and in either a tri- 
umph can be won only by an imagination 
strong enough to foresee and to divine what is 
hidden from the weakling. We are a trading 
community, after all and above all, even if we 
come of fighting stock. We are a trading com- 
munity, just as Athens was, and Venice and 
6 



Florence. And like the men of these earlier JTmerican 
commonwealths, the men of the United States Character 
are trying to make money. They are striving 
to make money not solely to amass riches, but 
partly because having money is the outward 
and visible sign of success,— because it is the 
most obvious measure of accomplishment. 
In his talk with Tolstoi our French critic re- 
vealed an unexpected insight when he asserted 
that the passion of American life was not so 
much the use of money as a delight in the con- 
quest of it. Many an American man of affairs 
would admit without hesitation that he would 
rather make half a million dollars than inherit 
a million. It is the process he enjoys, rather 
than the result; it is the tough tussle in the 
open market which gives him the keenest plea- 
sure, and not the idle contemplation of wealth 
safely stored away. He girds himself for battle 
and fights for his own hand ; he is the son and 
the grandson of the stalwart adventurers who 
came from the Old World to face the chances 
of the new. This is why he is unwilling to retire 
as men are wont to do in Europe when their for- 
tunes are made. Merely to have money does 
not greatly delight him— although he would 
regret not having it ; but what does delight him 
unceasingly is the fun of making it. 

7 



Jlmetican The money itself often he does not know what 
(H^atactet to do with; and he can find no more selfish use 
for it than to give it away. He seems to recog- 
nize that his making it was in some measure 
due to the unconscious assistance of the com- 
munity as a whole ; and he feels it his duty to 
do something for the people among whom he 
lives. It must be noted that the people them- 
selves also expect this from him ; they expect 
him sooner or later to pay his footing. As a re- 
sult of this pressure of public opinion and of 
his own lack of interest in money itself, he 
gives freely. In time he comes to find pleasure 
in this as well; and he applies his business 
sagacity to his benefactions. Nothing is more 
characteristic of modern American life than 
this pouring out of private wealth for public 
service. Nothing remotely resembling it is to 
be seen now in any country of the Old World ; 
and not even in Athens in its noblest days was 
there a larger-handed lavishness of the indi- 
vidual for the benefit of the community. 
Again, in no country of the Old World is the 
prestige of wealth less powerful than it is here. 
This, of course, the foreigner fails to perceive ; 
he does not discover that it is not the man who 
happens to possess money that we regard with 
admiration but the man who is making money, 
8 



and thereby proving his efficiency and indi- JJmetican 
rectly benefiting the community. To many it Character 
may sound like an insufferable paradox to as- 
sert that nowhere in the civilized world to-day 
is money itself of less weight than here in the 
United States; but the broader his opportunity 
the more likely is an honest observer to come 
to this unexpected conclusion. Fortunes are 
made in a day almost, and they may fade away 
in a night ; as the Yankee proverb put it pithily, 
" it's only three generations from shirt-sleeves 
to shirt-sleeves." Wealth iz likely to lack some- 
thing of its glamor in a land where well-being 
is widely diffused and where a large proportion 
of the population have either had a fortune and 
lost it, or else expect to gain one in the imme- 
diate future. 
Probably also there is no country which now 
contains more men who do not greatly care 
for large gains and who have gladly given up 
money-making for some other occupation they 
found more profitable for themselves. These 
are the men like Thoreau— in whose "Wal- 
den," now half a century old, we can find an 
emphatic declaration of all the latest doctrines 
of the simple life. We have all heard of Agas- 
siz, — best of Americans, even though he was 
born in another republic, — how he repelled the 

9 



Tfmctican proffer of large terms for a series of lectures, 
C^avactev with the answer that he had no time to make 
money. Closely akin was the reply of a famous 
machinist in response to an inquiry as to what 
he had been doing, — to the effect that he had 
accomplished nothing of late, — "we have just 
been building engines and making money, and 
I 'm about tired of it." And a few years ago a 
college professor of known executive ability 
declined the presidency of a trust company 
which offered him a salary at least five times 
what he was receiving. There are not a few 
men to-day in these toiling United States who 
hold with Ben Jonson that "money never made 
any man rich, — but his mind." 

But while this is true, while there are some 
men among us who care little for money, and 
while there are many who care chiefly for the 
making of it, ready to share it when made with 
their fellow-citizens, candor compels the ad- 
mission that there are also not a few who are 
greedy and grasping, selfish and shameless, 
and who stand forward, conspicuous and un- 
scrupulous, as if to justify to the full the as- 
persions which foreigners cast upon us. Al- 
though these men manage for the most part 
to keep within the letter of the law, their mo- 
rality is that of the wrecker and of the pirate. 

10 



It is a symptom of health in the body politic Jimctican 
that the proposal has been made to inflict so- (Ztjatactct 
cial ostracism upon the criminal rich. We need 
to stiffen our conscience and to set up a loftier 
standard of social intercourse, refusing to fel- 
lowship with the men who make their money 
by overriding the law or by undermining it— 
just as we should have declined the friendship 
of Captain Kidd before he had buried his stolen 
treasure. 
In the immediate future these men will be 
made to feel that they are under the ban of 
public opinion. One sign of an acuter sensitive- 
ness is the recent outcry against the accept- 
ance of ''tainted money" for the support of 
good works. Although it is wise always to give 
a good deed the credit of a good motive, yet it 
is impossible sometimes not to suspect that 
certain large gifts have an aspect of "con- 
science money." Some of them seem to be the 
result of a desire to divert public attention from 
the evil way in which the money was made to 
the nobler manner in which it is spent. They 
appear to be the attempt of a social outlaw to 
buy his peace with the community. Apparently 
there are rich men among us, who, having sold 
their honor for a price, would now gladly give 
up the half of their fortunes to get it back. 

II 



^tncticatl Candor compels the admission also that by 
Character the side of the criminal rich there exists the 
less noxious but more offensive class of the idle 
rich, who lead lives of wasteful luxury and of 
empty excitement. When the French reporter 
who talked with Tolstoi called us Americans 
"avid of pleasure" it was this little group he 
had in mind, as he may have seen the members 
of it splurging about in Paris, squandering and 
self-advertising. Although these idle rich ex- 
hibit themselves most openly and to least ad- 
vantage in Paris and in London, their foolish 
doings are recorded superabundantly in our 
own newspapers; and their demoralizing in- 
fluence is spread abroad. The snobbish report 
of their misguided attempts at amusement may 
even be a source of danger in that it seems to 
recognize a false standard of social success, or 
in that it may excite a miserable ambition to 
emulate these pitiful frivolities. But there is no 
need of delaying longer over the idle rich ; they 
are only a few, and they have doomed them- 
selves to destruction, since it is an inexorable 
fact that those who break the laws of nature 
can have no hope of executive clemency. 

" Patience a little ; learn to wait, 
Years are long on the clock of Fate." 



12 



in Jimctican 

The second charge which the wandering Pari- (Z^dtactct 
sian journalist brought against us was that we 
ignore the arts and that we despise disinter- 
ested beauty. Here again the answer that is 
easiest is not altogether satisfactory. There is 
no difficulty in declaring that there are Ameri- 
can artists, both painters and sculptors, who 
have gained the most cordial appreciation in 
Paris itself, or in drawing attention to the fact 
that certain of the minor arts — that of the sil- 
versmith, for one, and for another, that of the 
glass-blower and the glass-cutter— flourish in 
the United States at least as richly as they do 
anywhere else, while the art of designing in 
stained glass has had a new birth here, which 
has given it a vigorous vitality lacking in Eu- 
rope since the Middle Ages. It would not be 
hard to show that our American architects are 
now undertaking to solve new problems wholly 
unknown to the builders of Europe, and that 
they are often succeeding in this grapple with 
unprecedented difficulty. Nor would it take 
long to draw up a list of the concerted efforts 
of certain of our cities to make themselves 
more worthy and more sightly with parks well 
planned and with public buildings well pro- 
portioned and appropriately decorated. We 

13 



JTmecican might even invoke the memory of the evanes- 
€tjatactet cent loveliness of the "White City" that graced 
the shores of Lake Michigan a few years ago; 
and we might draw attention again to the Li- 
brary of Congress, a later triumph of the al- 
lied arts of the architect, the sculptor and the 
painter. 

But however full of high hope for the future 
we may esteem these several instances of our 
reaching out for beauty, we must admit— if we 
are honest with ourselves— that they are all 
more or less exceptional, and that to offset this 
list of artistic achievements the Devil's Advo- 
cate could bring forward a damning catalog of 
crimes against good taste which would go far 
to prove that the feeling for beauty is dead 
here in America and also the desire for it. The 
Devil's Advocate would bid us consider the 
flaring and often vulgar advertisements that 
disfigure our highways, the barbaric ineptness 
of many of our public buildings, the squalor of 
the outskirts of our towns and villages, the 
hideousness and horror of the slums in most 
of our cities, the negligent toleration of dirt 
and disorder in our public conveyances, and 
many another pitiable deficiency of our civili- 
zation present in the minds of all of us. 
The sole retort possible is a plea of confession 
14 



and avoidance, coupled with a promise of re- Jimetican 
formation. These evils are evident and they Character 
cannot be denied. But they are less evident to- 
day than they were yesterday; and we may 
honestly hope that they will be less evident to- 
morrow. The bare fact that they have been ob- 
served warrants the belief that unceasing ef- 
fort will be made to do away with them. Once 
aroused, public opinion will work its will in 
due season. And here occasion serves to deny 
boldly the justice of a part of the accusation 
which the French reporter brought against us. 
It may be true that we "ignore the arts,"— al- 
though this is an obvious overstatement of the 
case ; but it is not true that we despise beauty. 
However ignorant the American people may 
be as a whole, they are in no sense hostile to- 
ward art— as certain other people seem to be. 
On the contrary, they welcome it ; with all their 
ignorance, they are anxious to understand it ; 
they are pathetically eager for it. They are so 
desirous of it that they want it in a hurry, only 
too often to find themselves put off with an 
empty imitation. But the desire itself is indis- 
putable ; and its accomplishment is likely to be 
helped along by the constant commingling here 
of peoples from various other stocks than the 
Anglo-Saxon, since the mixture of races tends 

IS 



^mctican always to a swifter artistic development. 

Character It is well to probe deeper into the question 
and to face the fact that not only in the arts 
but also in the sciences we are not doing all 
that may fairly be expected of us. Athens was 
a trading city as New York is, but New York 
has had no Sophocles and no Phidias. Flor- 
ence and Venice were towns whose merchants 
were princes, but no American city has yet 
brought forth a Giotto, a Dante, a Titian. It 
is now nearly threescore years and ten since 
Emerson delivered his address on the "Ameri- 
can Scholar," which has well been styled our 
intellectual Declaration of Independence, and 
in which he expressed the hope that "perhaps 
the time is already come . . . when the slug- 
gard intellect of this continent will look from 
under its iron lids and fulfil the postponed ex- 
pectation of the world with something better 
than the exertions of a mechanical skill." Nearly 
seventy years ago was this prophecy uttered 
which still echoes unaccomplished. 

In the nineteenth century in which we came 
to maturity as a nation, no one of the chief 
leaders of art, even including literature in its 
broadest aspects, and no oneof the chief leaders 
in science, was native to our country. Perhaps 
we may claim that Webster was one of the 
i6 



world's greatest orators and that Parkman was JJmetican 
one of the world's greatest historians; but (Z^atactCt 
probably the world outside of the United States 
would be found unprepared and unwilling to 
admit either claim, however likely it may be 
to win acceptance in the future. Lincoln is in- 
disputably one of the world's greatest states- 
men; and his fame is now firmly established 
throughout the whole of civilization. But this 
is all we can assert ; and we cannot deny that 
we have given birth to very few indeed of the 
foremost poets, dramatists, novelists, painters, 
sculptors, architects or scientific discoverers 
of the last hundred years. 
Alfred Russel Wallace, whose renown is 
linked with Darwin's and whose competence 
as a critic of scientific advance is beyond dis- 
pute, has declared that the nineteenth century 
was the most wonderful of all since the world 
began. He asserts that the scientific achieve- 
ments of the last hundred years, both in the 
discovery of general principles and in their 
practical application, exceed in number the 
sum total of the scientific achievements to be 
credited to all the centuries that went before. 
He considers, first of all, the practical applica- 
tions, which made the aspect of civilization in 
1900 differ in a thousand ways from what it had 

17 



Jimctican been in 1801. He names a dozen of these prac- 
€fjatactet tical applications : railways, steam navigation, 
the electric telegraph, the telephone, friction- 
matches, gas-lighting, electric lighting, the 
photograph, the Roentgen rays, spectrum an- 
alysis, anesthetics, and antiseptics. It is with 
pride that an American can check off not a few 
of these utilities as being due wholly or in large 
part to the ingenuity of one or another of his 
countrymen. 
But his pride has a fall when Wallace draws 
up a second list not of mere inventions but of 
these fundamental discoveries, of those fecun- 
dating theories underlying all practical appli- 
cations and making them possible, of those 
principles "which have extended our know- 
ledge or widened our conceptions of the uni- 
verse." Of these he catalogs twelve; and we 
are pained to find that no American has had 
an important share in the establishment of any 
of these broad generalizations. We may have 
added a little here and there; but no single one 
of all the twelve discoveries is mainly to be 
credited to any American. It seems as if our 
French critic was not so far out when he as- 
serted that we were ** terribly practical." In the 
application of principles, in the devising of new 
methods, our share was larger than that of any 
18 



other nation. In the working out of the stimu- JTmertcan 
lating principles themselves, our share was Character 
less than **a younger brother's portion." 
It is only fair to say, however, that even though 
we may not have brought forth a chief leader of 
art or of science to adorn the wonderful cen- 
tury, there are other evidences of our practical 
sagacity than those set down by Wallace, evi- 
dences more favorable and of better augury for 
our future. We derived our language and our 
laws, our public justice and our representative 
government, from our English ancestors, as 
we derived from the Dutch our religious tol- 
eration and perhaps also our large freedom of 
educational opportunity. In our time we have 
set an example to others and helped along the 
progress of the world. President Eliot holds 
that we have made five important contribu- 
tions to the advancement of civilization. First 
of all, we have done more than any other peo- 
ple to further peace-keeping, and to substitute 
legal arbitration for the brute conflict of war. 
Second, we have set a splendid example of the 
broadest religious toleration, — even though 
Holland had first shown us how. Third, we 
have made evident the wisdom of universal 
manhood suffrage. Fourth, by our welcoming 
of new-comers from all parts of the earth, we 

19 



JJmetican have proved that men belonging to a great 
(Zfjatactet variety of races are fit for political freedom. 
Finally, we have succeeded in diffusing mate- 
rial well-being among the whole population to 
an extent without parallel in any other coun- 
try in the world. 

These five American contributions to civili- 
zation are all of them the result of the practi- 
cal side of the American character. They may 
even seem commonplace as compared with the 
conquering exploits of some other races. But 
they are more than merely practical; they are 
all essentially moral. As President Eliot in- 
sists, they are "triumphs of reason, enterprise, 
courage, faith and justice over passion, self- 
ishness, inertness, timidity, and distrust. Be- 
neath each of these developments there lies a 
strong ethical sentiment, a strenuous moral 
and social purpose. It is for such work that 
multitudinous democracies are fit." 

IV 

A "strong ethical sentiment" and a "strenu- 
ous moral purpose" cannot flourish unless they 
are deeply rooted to idealism. And here we 
find an adequate answer to the third assertion 
of Tolstoi's visitor, who maintained that we 
are "hostile to all idealism." Our idealism may 

20 



be of a practical sort, but it is idealism none J^mctican 
the less. Emerson was an idealist, although (Character 
he was also a thrifty Yankee. Lincoln was 
an idealist, even if he was also a practical poli- 
tician, an opportunist, knowing where he 
wanted to go, but never crossing a bridge be- 
fore he came to it. Emerson and Lincoln had 
ever a firm grip on the facts of life; each of 
them kept his gaze fixed on the stars,— and 
he also kept his feet firm on the soil. 
There is a sham idealism, boastful and shabby, 
which stares at the moon and stumbles in the 
mud, as Shelley did and Poe also. But the basis 
of the highest genius is always a broad com- 
mon sense. Shakspere and Moliere were held 
in esteem by their comrades for their under- 
standing of affairs ; and they each of them had 
money out at interest. Sophocles was entrusted 
with command in battle ; and Goethe was the 
shrewdest of the Grand Duke's counsellors. 
The idealism of Shakspere and of Moliere, of 
Sophocles and of Goethe, is like that of Emer- 
son and of Lincoln ; it is unfailingly practical. 
And thereby it is sharply set apart from the 
aristocratic idealism of Plato and of Renan, 
of Ruskin and of Nietzsche, which is founded 
on obvious self-esteem and which is sustained 
by arrogant and inexhaustible egotism. True 

21 



JJmetican idealism is not only practical, it is also liberal 

Ctjatactet and tolerant. 

Perhaps it might seem to be claiming too 
much to insist on certain points of similarity 
between us and the Greeks of old. The points 
of dissimilarity are only too evident to most 
of us; and yet there is a likeness as well as an 
unlikeness. Professor Butcher has recently 
asserted that "no people was ever less de- 
tached from the practical affairs of life" than 
the Greeks, "less insensible to outward utility; 
yet they regarded prosperity as a means, never 
as an end. The unquiet spirit of gain did not 
take possession of their souls. Shrewd traders 
and merchants, they were yet idealists. They 
did not lose sight of the higher and distinc- 
tively human aims which give life its signifi- 
cance." It will be well for us if this can be said 
of our civilization two thousand years after its 
day is done; and it is for us to make sure that 
"the unquiet spirit of gain" shall not take pos- 
session of our souls. It is for us also to rise to 
the attitude of the Greeks, among whom, as 
Professor Butcher points out, "money lavished 
on personal enjoyment was counted vulgar, 
oriental, inhuman." 

There is comfort in the memory of Lincoln and 
of those whose death on the field of Gettys- 

22 



burg he commemorated. The men who there JJmetican 
gave up their lives that the country might live (Z^avactet 
had answered to the call of patriotism, which 
is one of the sublimest images of idealism. 
There is comfort also in the recollection of 
Emerson, and in the fact that for many of the 
middle years of the nineteenth century he was 
the most popular of lecturers, with an unfad- 
ing attractiveness to the plain people, per- 
haps, because, in Lowell's fine phrase, he 
"kept constantly burning the beacon of an 
ideal life above the lower region of turmoil." 
There is comfort again in the knowledge that 
idealism is one manifestation of imagination, 
and that imagination itself is but an intenser 
form of energy. That we have energy and to 
spare, no one denies ; and we may reckon him 
a nearsighted observer who does not see also 
that we have our full share of imagination, 
even though it has not yet expressed itself in 
the loftiest regions of art and of science. The 
outlook is hopeful, and it is not true that 

"We, like sentries, are obliged to stand 
In starless nights and wait the appointed hour." 

The foundations of our commonwealth were 
laid by the sturdy Elizabethans who bore 
across the ocean with them their having of that 
imagination which in England flamed up in 

23 



JJmetican rugged prose and in superb and soaring verse. 

Character In two centuries and a half the sons of these 
stalwart Englishmen have lost nothing of their 
ability to see visions and to dream dreams, 
and to put solid foundations under their castles 
in the air. The flame may seem to die down 
for a season, but it springs again from the 
embers most unexpectedly, as it broke forth 
furiously in 1861. There was imagination at the 
core of the little war for the freeing of Cuba, — 
the very attack on Spain, which the Parisian 
journalist cited to Tolstoi as the proof of our 
predatory aggressiveness. We said that we 
were going to war for the sake of the ill-used 
people in the suffering island close to our 
shores ; we said that we would not annex Cuba ; 
we did the fighting that was needful ; — and we 
kept our word. It is hard to see how even the 
most bitter of critics can discover in this any- 
thing selfish.' 

There was imagination also in the sudden 
stopping of all the steamcraft, of all the rail- 
roads, of all the street-cars, of all the incessant 
traffic of the whole nation, at the moment when 
the body of a murdered chief magistrate was 
lowered into the grave. This pause in the work 
of the world was not only touching, it had a 
large significance to any one seeking to under- 
24 



stand the people of these United States. It was JJmetican 
a testimony that the Greeks would have appre- (Character 
dated; it had the bold simplicity of an Attic 
inscription. And we would thrill again in sym- 
pathetic response if it was in the pages of Plu- 
tarch that we read the record of another in- 
stance: When the time arrived for Admiral 
Sampson to surrender the command of the 
fleet he had brought back to Hampton Roads, 
he came on deck to meet there only those of- 
ficers whose prescribed duty required them to 
take part in the farewell ceremonies as set 
forth in the regulations. But when he went over 
the side of the flagship he found that the boat 
which was to bear him ashore was manned by 
the rest of the officers ready to row him them- 
selves and eager to render this last personal 
service; and then from every other ship of the 
fleet there put out a boat also manned by of- 
ficers, to escort for the last time the commander 
whom they loved and honored. 

V 

As another illustration of our regard for the 
finer and loftier aspects of life, consider our 
parks, set apart for the use of the people by 
the city, the state and the nation. In the cities 
of this new country the public playgrounds 

25 



JJmctican have had to be made, the most of them, and at 
Character high cost, — whereas the towns of the Old 
World have come into possession of theirs for 
nothing, more often than not, inheriting the 
private recreation-grounds of their rulers. And 
Europe has little or nothing to show similar 
either to the reservations of certain states, like 
the steadily enlarging preserves in the Cats- 
kills and the Adirondacks, or to the ampler 
national parks, the Yellowstone, the Yosemite 
and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, some 
of them far larger in area than one at least of 
the original thirteen states. Overcoming the 
pressure of private greed, the people have or- 
dained the preservation of this natural beauty 
and its protection for all time under the safe 
guardianship of the nation and with free access 
to all who may claim admission to enjoy it. 
In like manner many of thebattlefields, where- 
on the nation spent its blood that it might be 
what it is and what it hopes to be, —these have 
been taken over by the nation itself and set 
apart and kept as holy places of pilgrimage. 
They are free from the despoiling hand of any 
individual owner. They are adorned with monu- 
ments recording the brave deeds of the men 
who fought there. They serve as constant re- 
minders of the duty we owe to our country and 
26 



of the debt we owe to those who made it and JJmetican 
who saved it for us. And the loyal veneration Character 
with which these fields of blood have been 
cherished here in the United States finds no 
counterpart in any country in Europe, no mat- 
ter how glorious may be its annals of military 
prowess. Even Waterloo is in private hands; 
and its broad acres, enriched by the bones of 
thousands, are tilled every year by the indus- 
trious Belgian farmers. Yet it was a French- 
man, Renan, who told us that what welds men 
into a nation, is " the memory of great deeds 
done in common and the will to accomplish 
yet more." 

According to the theory of the conservation of 
energy, there ought to be about as much virtue 
in the world at one time as at another. Accord- 
ing to the theory of the survival of the fittest, 
there ought to be a little more now than there 
was a century ago. We Americans to-day have 
our faults, and they are abundant enough and 
blatant enough, and foreigners take care that 
we shall not overlook them; but our ethical 
standard — however imperfectly we may attain 
to it —is higher than that of the Greeks under 
Pericles, of the Romans under Caesar, of the 
English under Elizabeth. It is higher even 
than that of our forefathers who established 

27 



^mctican our freedom, as those know best who have 
Character most carefully inquired into the inner history 
of the American Revolution. In nothing was 
our advance more striking than in the different 
treatment meted out to the vanquished after 
the Revolution and after the Civil War. When 
we made our peace with the British the native 
tories were proscribed, and thousands of loyal- 
ists left the United States to carry into Canada 
the indurated hatred of the exiled. But after 
Lee's surrender at Appomattox, no body of 
men, no single man indeed, was driven forth 
to live an alien for the rest of his days; even 
though a few might choose to go, none were 
compelled. 

This change of conduct on the part of those 
who were victors in the struggle was evidence 
of an increasing sympathy. Not only is section- 
alism disappearing, but with it is departing the 
feeling that really underlies it, — the distrust of 
those who dwell elsewhere than where we do. 
This distrust is common all over Europe to- 
day. Here in America it has yielded to a friendly 
neighborliness which makes the family from 
Portland, Maine, soon find itself at home in 
Portland, Oregon. It is getting hard for us to 
hate anybody, — especially since we have dis- 
established the devil. We are good-natured and 



easy-going; Herbert Spencer even denounced j(mctican 
this as our immediate danger, maintaining that (Character 
we were too good-natured, too easy-going, too 
tolerant of evil ; and he insisted that we needed 
to strengthen our wills to protest against wrong 
and to wrestle with it resolutely, and to over- 
come before it is firmly rooted. 

VI 

We are kindly and we are helpful ; and we are 
fixed in the belief that somehow everything will 
work out all right in the long run. But nothing 
will work out all right unless we so make it 
work ; and excessive optimism may be as cor- 
rupting to the fiber of the people as "the Sab- 
bathless pursuit of fortune," as Bacon termed 
it. When Mr. John Morley was last in this 
country he seized swiftly upon a chance allu- 
sion of mine to this ingrained hopefulness of 
ours. "Ah, what you call optimism," he cried, 
"I call fatalism." But an optimism which is sol- 
idly based on a survey of the facts cannot fairly 
be termed fatalism; and another British stu- 
dent of political science, Mr. James Bryce, has 
recently pointed out that the intelligent native 
American has— and by experience is justified 
in having— a firm conviction that the majority 
of qualified voters are pretty sure to be right. 

29 



Jimctican Then he suggested a reason for the faith that 
(Z^atactet is in us, when he declared that no such feeling 
exists in Europe, since in Germany the gov- 
erning class dreads the spread of socialism, in 
France the republicans know that it is not im- 
possible that Monarchism and Clericalism may 
succeed in upsetting the Republic, while in 
Great Britain each party believes that the other 
party, when it succeeds, succeeds by mislead- 
ing the people, and neither party supposes that 
the majority are any more likely to be right 
than to be wrong. 
Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce were both here in 
the United States in the fall of 1904, when we 
were in the midst of a presidential election, 
one of those prolonged national debates, cre- 
ating incessant commotion, but invaluable 
agents of our political education, in so far as 
they force us all to take thought about the un- 
derlying principles of policy by which we wish 
to see the government guided. It was while 
this political campaign was at its height that 
the French visitor to the Russian novelist was 
setting his notes in order and copying out his 
assertion that we Americans were mere money- 
grubbers, "systematically hostile to all ideal- 
ism." If this unthinking Parisian journalist 
had only taken the trouble to consider the ad- 
30 



dresses which the chief speakers of the two !Mtnetican 
parties here in the United States were then Character 
making to their fellow-citizens in the hope of 
winning votes, he would have discovered that 
these practical politicians, trained to perceive 
the subtler shades of popular feeling, were 
founding all their arguments on the assumption 
that the American people as a whole wanted 
to do right. He would have seen that the ap- 
peal of these stalwart partisans was rarely to 
prejudice or to race-hatred, — evil spirits that 
various orators have sought to arouse and to 
intensify in the more recent political discussion 
of the French themselves. 
An examination of the platforms, of the let- 
ters of the candidates, and of the speeches of 
the more important leaders on both sides re- 
vealed to an American observer the significant 
fact that "each party tried to demonstrate that 
it was more peaceable, more equitable, more 
sincerely devoted to lawful and righteous be- 
havior than the other;" and **the voter was in- 
stinctively credited with loving peace and 
righteousness, and with being stirred by sen- 
timents of good-will toward men." This seems 
to show that the heart of the people is sound, 
and that it does not throb in response to ig- 
noble appeals. It seems to show that there is 

31 



Jimetican here the desire ever to do right and to see right 

(Z^atactet done, even if the will is weakened a little by 

easy-going good-nature, and even if the will 

fails at times to stiffen itself resolutely to make 

sure that the right shall prevail. 

"Liberty hath a sharp and double edge fit 
only to be handled by just and virtuous men," 
so Milton asserted long ago, adding that "to 
the bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief 
unwieldy in their own hands." Even if we 
Americans can clear ourselves of being " bad 
and dissolute," we have much to do before we 
may claim to be "just and virtuous." Justice 
and virtue are not to be had for the asking; 
they are the rewards of a manful contest with 
selfishness and with sloth. They are the re- 
sults of an honest effort to think straight, and 
to apply eternal principles to present needs. 
Merely to feel is only the beginning; what re- 
mains is to think and to act. 
A British historian, Mr. Frederic Harrison, 
who came here to spy out the land three or 
four years before Mr. Morley and Mr. Bryce 
last visited us, was struck by the fact— and 
by the many consequences of the fact — that 
"America is the only land on earth where 
caste has never had a footing, nor has left a 
trace." It seemed to him that "vast numbers 
32 



and the passion of equality tend to low aver- Jfmerican 
ages in thought, in manners, and in public C^atactct 
opinion, which the zeal of the devoted minor- 
ity tends gradually to raise to higher planes 
of thought and conduct." He believed that we 
should solve our problems one by one because 
"the zeal for learning, justice and humanity" 
lies deep in the American heart. Mr. Harrison 
did not say it in so many words, but it is im- 
plied in what he did say, that the absence of 
caste and the presence of low averages in 
thought, in manners, and in public opinion 
impose a heavier task on the devoted minor- 
ity, whose duty it is to keep alive the zeal for 
learning, justice and humanity. 
Which of us, if haply the spirit moves him, 
may not elect himself to this devoted minor- 
ity? Why should not we also, each in our own 
way, without pretense, without boastfulness, 
without bullying, do whatsoever in us lies for 
the attainment of justice and of virtue? It is 
well to be a gentleman and a scholar; but after 
all it is best to be a man, ready to do a man's 
work in the world. And indeed there is no rea- 
son why a gentleman and a scholar should not 
also be a man. He will need to cherish what 
Huxley called "that enthusiasm for truth, that 
fanaticism for veracity, which is a greater pos- 

33 



^tnetican session than much learning, a nobler gift than 
Character the power of increasing knowledge." He will 
need also to remember that 

"Kings have their dynasties, —but not the mind ; 
Caesar leaves other Caesars to succeed, 
But Wisdom, dying, leaves no heir behind." 



MAYn^i^oe: 



